


Stargazer

by theironrosebud



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff, Jakku, Mechanic OC - Freeform, Missing Scene, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pilots, Poe Dameron drinks respect women juice, Sort Of, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26890561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theironrosebud/pseuds/theironrosebud
Summary: On Jakku, everything is either junk metal or sand. Anya I'Denn is a spitfire mechanic who has more skill  than she has working machines to fix, and she's determined to do more than waste away cleaning the same pieces of dusty scrap metal day in and day out. All she needs is a pilot to get her off the system. Unfortunately, Anya learned a long time ago not to trust pilots.Enter Poe Dameron. Pilot. His mission is to get off Jakku and resume fighting with the Resistance to save the galaxy, the same galaxy Anya is so desperate to see. Their meeting was completely by chance, their subsequent arrangement a little less by chance, and their fate... Well, let's just say they are each other's only hope.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	1. Sweat and Sand

Poe Dameron was starting to hate sand. He’d woken up back on the surface of Jakku after crash-landing the commandeered TIE-fighter, and since then, he hadn’t been able to get the gritty feeling out of his senses. It was in his hair, his clothes, his stubble. He licked his lips and tasted sand. 

Poe currently stood outside a dingy cantina in Blowback Town waiting for his new ally Naka Iit to come back with an exodus plan, but he was beginning to have his doubts. He had won Naka Iit’s assistance easily enough, but now Naka had to convince his Blarina friend to get him a ship and some off-world transportation. Whatever negotiations were happening inside the cantina were taking too long, and time was something Poe didn’t have. He needed to find his droid. 

The pilot squinted in the sunlight and licked his drying lips again. Sweat and sand. 

Blowback Town didn’t have a lot to offer. Besides the cantina behind him, the main square had probably three main structures, and the rest of the sparse settlement was made of temporary-looking stalls. People milled around cleaning scrap, selling scrap, and buying scrap. Splayed outward away from the square in the wilderness, the locals made their homes in broken down shelters, also made of scrap, from what Poe could tell. 

“I want my money back, thief!” The rough protest drew Poe’s gaze over to one stall on the other side of the small settlement. A robust trader was shouting at a human female over some beat up speeder bike. 

“Well, you’re not getting your money back. You paid me to fix it; I fixed it,” the woman responded, indignantly. 

“You call that fixed? The Mag-lev belt is busted! This hunk of junk won’t get two feet off the ground.” The trader snarled. 

“The mag-lev isn’t busted. It worked when I dropped off the speeder yesterday and you bought it back. Final sale.” The woman was shouting now. 

People who have nothing will fight over anything, Poe thought. Anything but sand. 

Poe was about to turn and duck into the shady cantina to check on the Blarinas when the trader’s meaty hand shot out to grab the woman by the arm. 

“You’re gonna give me my money back or wish you had,” he said. 

“Get your hands off of me, you--” 

“Hey,” Poe shouted. Before he knew what was happening, his feet were pushing him across the outpost to the arguing pair. 

The woman’s cowl fell away from her head in the struggle and revealed her curly black hair. She tore her piercing green-blue gaze away from her attacker to watch Poe’s vindictive approach. She wasn’t sure who he was or why he was intervening, but she had a bad feeling about it. 

The trader also switched his attention to the approaching Poe, but he didn’t loosen his grip at all, much to the woman’s dislike. 

Up close, Poe could see she was average height and size for a human woman, but her arm was all but swallowed by the trader’s hand. Her face, perfectly framed by wisps of dark hair, was contorted in anger and disgust, but Poe could tell she was fighting off a pained look caused by the crushing grip on her arm. She was beautiful, and she was furious. 

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to put your hands on a lady,” Poe said. 

Fucking great, the woman thought. If it was any other situation, she would have rolled her eyes at the line. 

“Stay out of this, scumbag,” hurled the trader. The woman gasped through her teeth as his hand tightened. Her fingertips felt fuzzy like comm static. 

“Scumbag? You’re the one with your hands on the girl,” Poe shot back. “Let her go!”

“No! This one’s a thief. I’ll let her go when she gives me what I’m owed.”

“I don’t owe you shit, Takka,” she interjected. 

Poe took one look at the banged up speeder bike in question. He flicked the engine switch on and the speeder hummed to life, lilting a couple feet off the ground with a whir. 

“Look at that.” He smirked. “It works. Let her go.”

Poe took the girl’s other wrist gently in his hand, ready to pull her physically away from this situation the second the trader let go. 

The trader didn’t let go. 

“Whatever,” he said lowly. “We’ll see what happens next time you try to sell and your boyfriend’s not around to protect you. You’re never making it off this wasteland.” And with that the trader shoved her hard. 

Poe caught her against his chest with one arm and stumbled away from the speeder and its chuckling owner. She moved like she wanted to fight him, but Poe firmly led her by the shoulders until they were out of the square’s sight and somewhat alone between buildings. Once they were in the alleyway, he let her go and she flexed and stretched her tingling arm. 

Poe stood back and watched as she shifted her weight between her feet and tried to massage some feeling back into her elbow. She was wearing a pair of black boots, smudgy brown leggings, a fitted sleeveless top, and her brown cowl which now hung around her collar. There were a pair of goggles perched on top of her head. Now that her face was more calm, he could see faint freckles splattered across her tan cheeks, and a few scars and oil smudges on her chin and forehead. 

“What?” She asked when she finally caught him staring. 

“N-nothing,” Poe said, shaking his head. 

“You rescue me, and now you want a favor, is that it?” she snapped. “Well, I’m not getting on my knees to show my thanks like some whore.”

Poe shook his head and took a step back, raising his hands in surrender. 

“I never said you should,” he said earnestly. The suggestion Poe would make her do that sent a gross twisting sensation through his gut. “But a verbal ‘thank you’ would be nice.”

“Thank you-” his lips turned up in a slight smile “-but I didn’t need your help.” His smile dropped.

Poe tried not to get snarky, but he replied, “It kinda looked like you did.”

“You only bought me some time. What Takka wants, Takka gets; he’ll slither back around. I’ll just have to try not to be here when he does.” With this, the woman took her eyes off her smudgy hands and took in Poe’s appearance for the first time. 

He had a handsome face and pretty dark curls not unlike her own. His brown eyes tried not to look obvious, but they were studying her, flicking calmly over her form. He looked a little tired and sweat-soaked, but other than that his body language radiated confidence. 

He must be a pilot, she thought. 

She knew the type. Pilots thought the rules didn’t apply to them. They acted like they were indestructible. They were cocky and daring, and suave. They were the worst. 

“You’re not from around here, are you?” She squinted her eyes at him and suspicion dripped into her tone of voice. 

“Nope,” he said. “I crash-landed after escaping from that star destroyer that was hanging around up there.” He couldn’t help but smirk a little bit at that. 

Definitely a pilot, she thought. It took everything not to roll her eyes at him. 

“My name’s Poe Dameron; what’s yours?” He held out his hand to shake. 

She looked at it before meeting his eyes. 

“Anya. I’Denn.” They shook hands. 

“Anya!” The two glanced to the mouth of the alley. There stood Naka Iit. “Poe,” he said, approaching. “I was looking for you. I thought I told you not to wander off.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.”

“I see you’ve met your co-pilot,” said Naka. 

“Co-pilot?” Poe asked skeptically. 

“What are you on about, Naka?” Anya asked, unamused. 

“I found you a ship, but it needs repairs before it’s ready,” the Blarina said. “Anya’s a mechanic. We’ll need her help.”

“I can do my own repairs,” Poe interrupted. He could tell Anya wasn’t very open to the idea of spending more time with him after her ‘whore’ comment. 

“You still want off Jakku, Anya?” Naka turned his attention to the woman. 

“Yes, but--”

“Then it’s settled. Anya will fix Ohn Gos’ ship, and Poe will fly you both off to whatever system you came from.” Naka Iit looked positively satisfied by the arrangement. 

Poe and Anya just looked at each other in thinly veiled shock. 

On one hand, Poe had only meant to get Anya away from the trader, and then go about his day. He needed to get off this sand-stifled wasteland and back to BB-8 and the Resistance. He didn’t have time for rubbing elbows with every junker on this system. 

But Anya was a better mechanic than he probably was, and although his repairs might be passable, it was a risky voyage ahead. He needed her. 

On the other hand, all Anya ever wanted since she landed on Jakku was to get off Jakku. That’s why she was a mechanic for worms like Takka, so she could earn her way off this graveyard of a planet. Now her exit ticket landed right in her lap and she wanted to turn it down-- all because it meant spending time with a pilot? Maybe Takka had been right. She would never make it off this wasteland. 

Not without a pilot, a small voice in her head whispered. Her resolve started to cave, and she almost groaned at the sensation. She needed him. 

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll take a look and see what I can do.”

Poe tried to keep the surprise and the relief off of his face. He ran a hand through his dusty hair, and said, “Show us the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anya I'Denn is pronounced AHN-ya ee-dEN. 
> 
> Also, I won't lie, I'm posting this out of impulse, and I don't have a real outline yet. So let me know what you think, and we'll see how far it goes.


	2. Echo

“You want me to fix that?” Anya was standing in front of Ohn Gos’ decommissioned light freighter. It looked a hundred years old, and Anya could already bet it’s wiring and engine system was atrocious. 

Naka Iit chuckled. “Ohn Gos says it looks worse than it really is. He said people were less likely to steal it from him if it looked like a hunk of scrap.”

“Everything on Jakku is a hunk of scrap,” Poe muttered. 

Anya choked holding in a laugh and started to cough violently. Poe stared. 

“If you have the parts I need, I could finish it in a couple days or so,” she finally said, her voice slightly hoarse. 

“A couple days?” Poe exclaimed. 

“Or so.” 

“I need to leave sooner than that.”

Anya could tell his urgency was authentic, and it wasn’t coming from a place of selfishness or unkindness, but it irritated her nonetheless. “I’m a mechanic, not a miracle worker.”

He gave her a look. 

“Look at it, Poe,” she cried. “If you tried to fly it out now, you wouldn’t make it out of the atmosphere let alone through a jump.”

She was right, and he knew she was right. But he was too stubborn to tell her that. He needed to get back to Finn and BB-8 and Leia. His people. 

Anya pulled the pair of goggles that sat above her head down to cover her eyes, and adjusted the cowl back over her hair like a hood. She strode towards the ship with determination. Poe watched her go. One loose end of her cowl hung down her back and drifted in the breeze. 

To his side, he heard the Blarina chuckle again. 

“What?” Poe asked defensively. 

“You like her.”

“No, I don’t,” Poe replied. 

“Then you will soon,” said the Blarina. 

Poe waited a couple moments more before following her up the ramp into the freighter. 

He found her crouched under the control panel in the cockpit ripping out wires. 

“Can I help?” he asked calmly. When she didn’t answer, he tried again, “It might go faster if we both work on it.”

Sparks sizzled out almost striking Anya’s face. 

“Hell!” 

This is why she wore goggles. 

“Find a data pad so I can run diagnostics,” she told Poe. “I need to know what’s broken before I do anything.”

He backed out of the cockpit and went to find a tablet. 

When she was sure he was gone, Anya pulled herself out from under the panel and sat up, staring at the empty doorway. She tilted her head thoughtfully before letting out a gentle hm. She hadn’t expected Poe to actually listen to her. Usually her “helpers” were bad at following directions and, at worst, slowed down the job. That’s why she preferred to work alone. The only one Anya could trust to do a job right was herself. Now she reconsidered; maybe they would get this done sooner than she thought. 

Before he could return to find her contemplating, she thrust herself back under the controls and picked at a few more wires before finding what she needed. 

“I found this buried under some tools. It’s old, but it should work,” Poe said, handing her the data pad. 

She took it from him and got to work attaching it to the newly exposed wires. The tablet lit up, and started spitting out dated codes, a list of every injury the poor freighter currently sustained. Anya’s task list. 

Poe sat in the pilot’s chair and gave it an experimental spin. 

“You’re probably used to droids helping with this sort of thing, huh?” Anya asked while they waited for the codes to finish. 

Poe shrugged. “I’ve got BB-8. But not everyone has droids.”

“You’re just saying that because there aren’t any droids here on Jakku. I hear everywhere else, droids are as popular as people.”

Poe studied her for a minute. 

“You’ve never been off Jakku, have you?”

“Yes, I have,” Anya answered a little peeved. 

“You talk about it like you haven’t,” Poe observed. 

“It was a long time ago.”

“Where are you planning to go after this?”

“Anywhere.”

They were silent for a little while. 

The data pad gave a happy little beep, and Poe leaned over Anya’s shoulder to read the information. She looked at him sideways before shaking her head and returning her attention to the cracked screen. 

“Well, the good news is Ohn wasn’t lying. It looks worse than it really is. The bad news is we won’t be able to find some of the parts it takes to replace things, so I’ll have to figure out some alternative solutions.”

“Like?”

“Rerouting power through other parts of the ship so that the damaged parts don’t take too much heat.”

“But you think you can do it?” Poe asked. 

“I know I can do it,” Anya said. Now it was her turn to be cocky. Flight might be Poe’s strength, but fixing things was hers. 

She spent the rest of the day and early evening battering around the engines, doing what she could with the parts she had. Poe mostly just handed her tools and lifted whatever she couldn’t. Without his help it would have taken the whole day. Fortunately for them, it only took half of one. Occasionally she walked him through an installation he wasn’t familiar with, but other than that the day passed in silence. 

Poe had learned enough about engines and mechanics to repair the ships in the resistance fleet, in the case of an emergency. And he’d worked a little bit on the smuggling freighters when he had been a spice runner years ago. But he was not an expert by any means, and he’d be lying if he said he could have fixed this ship on his own. 

Anya’s work was impressive. Poe was reasonably skeptical of her skill at first, considering his first interaction with her had been during a dispute about her work, but he realized now she never would have half assed a paying job like Takka had insinuated. She was giving this her all and making more progress than she’d originally suggested she could. 

Soon enough the sun was going down, and Poe came to Anya with prepared portions of dinner he’d snagged from Naka Iit. The air had cooled, and they ate their food quietly on the lowered ramp of the freighter. 

Jakku had one sun and two moons. 

After they finished eating, Anya stood and brushed sand from her leggings. 

“Where are you going?” Poe asked. 

“Home,” Anya said. “I’ve gotta dig through some stuff there anyways and see if I have anything we can use for tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly. 

“Did you think I was staying here?” She asked. 

“I guess I didn’t think about it.”

“Well, if you stay here, be careful. If people notice there’s working parts in here, they might try and jack it.”

“Where do you live; I’ll walk you,” Poe stood up to follow her. 

“When are you gonna learn I can handle myself?” Anya quirked an eyebrow at him. 

Poe had a bad feeling about letting her go home alone, especially after Takka’s thinly veiled threats in the marketplace. But she was insistent and stubborn and a little voice in his head told him he should stop picking fights with her. So he nodded and said, “Alright. I’ll see you in the morning then.”

She pulled the cowl tighter against the chilled evening air and nodded. Then she turned and wandered into the desert night. 

To Poe, she had called it home. In reality, she liked to call it her “junky little hideout”. When she finally reached it, Anya was exhausted. Sand and salt crusted on her skin. She stripped out of her dusty clothes and wetted a rag to rinse herself off. She untied her hair and scratched at her scalp to ease some tension left from the messy braid. Her upper arm, the one the trader grabbed, was bruising badly and she’d have to find something to cover it with tomorrow. Finally, she sat on the edge of her bedroll and looked about her room. 

It was a wreck. Boxes full of parts and droid bits too worthless to sell stacked high against the walls. Tomorrow she would have to see if one of them held a pressure regulator, but she doubted it. This was all she had on Jakku. Ever since she had been stranded here all those years ago, she’d lived in this place like it was temporary. Now that it was almost time to say goodbye to it, a part of her hesitated. 

No, she thought. She needed to leave. There was nothing for her here. No reason to stay. Everything that was hers, was out there with the stars, waiting to be found. 

Anya picked up a comm link off the top of a sealed box beside the bedroll. She pressed a button. Nothing but static sounded from the piece. 

“This is Stargazer to Echo checking in,” Anya said. There was no response. “There’s a beautiful moonrise out tonight… Echo, you are clear for landing…It’s time to come back...”

She listened to the static buzz for a little while longer before she turned off the comm, and curled up on her bedroll. And just like that, she fell asleep.


	3. The Overall Worst

When Anya returned to the freighter the next morning carrying a box of dubiously functional droid and ship parts, she found Poe asleep in the pilot’s chair of the cockpit, blanket strewn about his shoulders, snoring loudly. 

She let the box down with a clang and Poe shot up out of the seat, a blaster in his hand. 

Anya was unfazed. “Rise and shine, flyboy. We’re getting out of here today.”

Poe holstered the blaster and ran a hand over his grimy face. Flyboy? he thought. She sounded like Leia. 

Anya grabbed the bulky pressure regulator off the top of the box and disappeared into the rest of the ship. 

He climbed to his feet, glancing at the box, and made to follow her. 

“What’s with the box?” he called. 

She didn’t answer. Instead she asked, “I heard there was a fight at Niima outpost yesterday. Your little BB droid got away with a couple friends.”

Poe nodded, “Yeah I found that out too, that’s why I have to get off world so I can find them.”

Anya was already in tinkering around under the floor of the ship. 

“What’s so special about the droid?” she asked. 

Poe’s blood ran cool at the question. Before, with Naka Iit, Poe hadn’t hesitated to tell the outrageous story to gain Naka Iit’s help. Now that he had to explain himself to Anya, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He wasn’t exactly keeping the mission a secret, but she clearly had some issues with Poe, and he didn’t want to ruin the little progress they had made by putting her off with his Resistance tales. Conversely, she might not want to get tangled up with the First Order, and telling her could cause her to abandon their whole deal. 

“He’s a special droid,” Poe said lamely. 

“Stormtroopers all but destroyed the Niima outpost. Poe, tell me. What’s so special about the droid?” 

She was no longer working on the ship, her goggles were off, and she was looking at him with stern but hopeful eyes. Poe couldn’t lie.

“He has a map to Luke Skywalker and I have to get it back to the Resistance so we can defeat the First Order.”

“Luke Skywalker, like the Rebel pilot?” she asked, confused. 

“Like the Jedi Master,” Poe corrected, equally confused. 

She looked at him like she wasn’t so sure, before sinking back into the open floor panel she was working out of.

“You need to lay low,” Anya said from out of Poe’s sight. She might hate Jakku, but she didn’t want to see the people of Blowback Town blown to smithereens by a Star Destroyer. 

“I am.” Poe crouched next to the opening in the floor. 

“Not yesterday when you were playing hero. You might have a bounty on your head. If the locals saw you help me and find out you’re still here, they won’t hesitate to try their hand at bringing you in.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Poe muttered, thinking back to his brief run in with the Strus clan thieves on his way to Blowback Town. He wondered if she would be mad at him forever. 

“I’m sure it’s not, but-” she popped out of the whole in the floor and came face to face with Poe “-that’s why we need to make it out of here. Today.”

Poe just looked at her, with her flushed cheeks and wild hair, and nodded. 

Then from under the floor there was a clunking sound followed by a hiss and a whistle and the next thing Anya knew steam was flooding out the underdeck in their faces. 

“Damn it,” she scrambled for a tool and disappeared out of Poe’s sight. 

He heard a stream of curses, most of which he knew and even some he didn’t know. She hammered at something, hard, making Poe wince. He felt he owed a verbal apology to the ship. Finally, the steam stopped, and Anya reemerged looking a little more smudgy than she had a moment ago. 

Her left hand was curled against her chest. 

“You’re hurt,” he said, trying to reach down to pull her up. His hand fell on her upper right arm, which was wrapped in the same muslin fabric as her cowl. 

Anya jolted away from him. “Don’t touch me!”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help,” he replied. Her left hand was bright pink and shaking. He tried to reach for her again. 

“Hands off,” she snapped, shrugging away from his touch again. 

Instead, she used her right arm to haul herself ungracefully out of the hole and stumbled over to her toolbox. Poe just watched as she fumbled with a tube of burn cream. 

“What’s your problem with me?” he finally asked. 

She didn’t respond. Poe was starting to hate the way she did that. 

“You were mad at me for helping you with the trader, you’re still mad now. Why? Is it because I’m with the Resistance?” 

Even as he said it, he knew it was unlikely, but it was the only thing he could think of that would drive a wedge between him and the people out here. People from these desolate systems didn’t know a lot about the wars going on. And if they did, it didn’t matter because they were too busy fighting for their own survival. 

“No,” Anya protested. She kept her eyes down as she smeared burn cream over her shaking hand. 

“You don’t care if the First Order wins or loses?” Poe challenged. Her head whipped up and she opened her mouth to retort, but he cut her off. “That galaxy you wanna see so bad is dying because of what they’re doing to it.”

“It’s not about that,” she said fervently. 

“Then what is it about?” he demanded. 

“You pilots are all the same.” She thrust the tube back into the tool box, and squared up to Poe, inches from his face. “You say you want to help the galaxy, that you want to be war heroes. But the truth is you are arrogant and self-destructive. You just do it for the rush, and then, when it’s over, you smile while people hand you a medal and thank you for it. Well, I won’t thank you for it, Poe Dameron.”

And with that she stormed out of the freighter. 

“Where are you going?” he called. 

“To find a different regulator!”

He looked around the empty space, and kicked the box of tools. 

Poe was mad, sure, but guilt slowly sunk into his brain and mixed with the frustration. He shouldn’t have pushed her like that, but Anya was just so hard for him to figure out. He was usually a smooth-talker, and while that got him out of trouble more often than not, it was a skill that also helped him get information out of others. He’d been talking to Anya for days, and he still knew limited facts about her, and that’s not something Poe was used to. All he knew was this: She was a great mechanic, but she hadn’t interacted a lot with droids. She didn’t know much about Jedi-- she’d recognized Luke Skywalker’s name as a pilot, not a master of the force. She didn’t have any clue where she actually wanted to go, as long as she wasn’t on Jakku. And she hated pilots. What did it all mean?

The way Anya talked about pilots didn’t sit well with him. It wasn’t that she was wrong. There were plenty of them who loved the rush, who took unnecessary risks, who were reckless. And when Poe had been a spice runner, he had been all of those things. He had balanced on a thread between life and death out among the stars. But the present Poe Dameron and the pilots in his squad did care about the new republic. They didn’t want to save the galaxy for glory, they wanted to save it because it… 

It is the right thing to do. Finn’s words from just the other day echoed in his mind. 

Poe realized then that when she came back, he had to apologize. And he had to do whatever he could to prove she was wrong about him, about pilots. He was going to show her that everything he did now was because it was the right thing to do. 

When Anya strode back into the freighter hours later, she looked less frustrated but a little on edge. He noticed she glanced over her shoulder once or twice before finally stepping into the shade of the ship. 

“Where did you get that?” he asked, gesturing to the part in her hands. 

She ignored his question and asked, “What still needs to be repaired?”

“Just that, and the power reroute you mentioned yesterday,” Poe said. 

She tossed the piece to him, and he caught it roughly against his chest. 

“Install that,” she commanded. “I’m gonna see what I can do about easing the energy. We leave as soon as it’s done.”

She passed him and made to disappear into the cockpit. 

“Wait, Anya,” he caught her by her wrapped arm and pulled her to look at him. 

Standing toe-to-toe in the threshold of the ship, Poe suddenly noticed she was almost a head shorter than him; if he looked straight forward, his gaze would just barely clear the top of her gauzy hood. His grip on her was loose, she could pull away if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She stared straight forward at his chest, not meeting his eyes. He ducked his head to look at her face. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been an ass.” 

Anya almost didn’t believe her ears. Her face tilted up to meet his eyes, thinking it was a lie and it would show on his face. But he said it so earnestly and he looked so serious, she must not be hallucinating. 

“Pretty much everyone in my unit would agree with you that I’m impulsive and arrogant and the overall worst.” Poe let out a little nervous chuckle. He saw her lips part but she didn’t speak. He continued, “A good friend of mine told me I need to work on that. So I’m sorry.”

And with that he released her sleeved arm, and let her walk slowly towards the cockpit. Before entering, she turned over her shoulder and said so softly he almost missed it, “Don’t be too busy taking risks that you forget there are people waiting for you to come home.”

It took Poe a second to understand the subtext of her words. Dots started connecting like the faint lines of a constellation. She resented pilots because she’d lost one. 

Before he could say something stupid like ‘I’m sorry’ or, even worse, ‘Who were they?’ he saw her lips quirk up in a little sly smirk. 

“And, don’t underestimate me again, flyboy.”

With that, she left him in the hallway, hands cradling a mysteriously acquired pressure regulator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the novelization of The Force Awakens, Poe Dameron gets picked up my the Blarina Naka Iit and taken to Blowback Town. On the way, they're pursued by the Strus banidt clan, but they get away. Then, Ohn Gos takes Poe back to Yavin IV in his freighter. 
> 
> Obviously I've taken some creative liberty with these facts; for example, Ohn Gos is giving Anya and Poe a beat up freighter to use for transport, instead of personally shuttling them to Yavin IV. Also, there's a bit of a stretch in the timeline between Poe's departure from Jakku and the Battle of Takodana. 
> 
> Just for reinforcement, Naka Iit and Ohn Gos are not my original characters. The only original characters so far are Takka the trader and Anya I'Denn.


	4. Blue

After Poe’s apology, Anya seemed a lot less cold. She still worked in silence for the majority of the afternoon, plugging and unplugging tubes and wires under the control panels, but this time she didn’t ignore him out of annoyance or frustration. 

Poe had finished putting in the elusive regulator, and passed the time by trying his hand at fixing the water in the tiny refresher so that maybe, just maybe he could rinse the sand off his body before making it back to Yavin IV and then the Resistance base. 

He wondered what would happen to Anya after he collected Black One from Yavin IV. Although Naka Iit called Anya his co-pilot, Poe was 99% sure she couldn’t fly. So if she wanted to go somewhere other than “anywhere”, she would either have to join a different crew or stay on Yavin IV. Poe wasn’t so sure about the first option. Sure, she could look out for herself, and he promised not to underrate her anymore, but he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t end up somewhere worse than Jakku. She didn’t know a lot about the faraway systems without the ability to travel there herself, someone might take advantage of that. 

She could come with you to the resistance base, a little voice in his head whispered. 

That voice had been a little more vocal than usual lately. Poe wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one hand, it wasn’t wrong. The Resistance always needed people like medics and mechanics, not just fighters. And working with them may give her the opportunity to see those systems she was so curious about. But then again, he thought, Anya might not want to join a war effort, and at the end of the day it was her choice to make. 

“Dameron, come check this out.”

He pulled himself to his feet and left the cramped refresher for the cockpit. 

Down by the floor, Anya had ripped a panel off the wall to expose a thick bright blue wire buried among the others. Poe crouched beside her. 

“See that?” she asked. 

“What the--”

“I know.” Anya tried not to sound too intrigued. “I looked at the data pad, and this whole cord shouldn’t be there. I can’t figure out what it’s for.”

“Looks like Ohn Gos made some custom adjustments to his system,” Poe said, slightly impressed. 

“I tried to route energy towards all the essentials, but I didn’t wanna touch that,” Anya said with an air of reverence. 

“You think it’s time to see if this baby can fly?” Poe looked at her, and to his surprise, she grinned. It was probably the first real smile he’d seen grace her face since they met. 

Before she could answer in the affirmative, a shout sounded from outside the ship. The pair stood and looked out the transparisteel of the cockpit. Poe squinted in the sunshine reflecting off the sandy surface of Blowback Town. He spotted a large figure approaching the freighter. He had company with him. 

“Thieves!” The trader shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at the ship. 

“Time to go,” said Anya, she flicked a couple switches on the dashboard and the ship hummed uncertainly to life. 

“Friends of yours?” Poe asked, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair. 

“I needed a pressure regulator,” she argued. 

The little radar screen blinked awake and displayed a cluster of incoming speeders from the direction of the dunes. Strus Clan. 

“Friends of yours?” Anya echoed. She sped out of the cockpit to close the gaping hole in the floor where they’d been making repairs.

“They were bandits, nothing serious,” Poe defended. The engines roared to life before promptly stuttering with a groan. 

“It’s serious now!” she shouted. “They must have come back for the bounty.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said mostly to himself. 

“Already on it,” Anya answered. 

Anya stepped onto the still-lowered ramp with a lethal-looking rifle in her hands. 

The mob was running closer. “Sneak thief scum!” the trader shouted.

She took aim and fired, nailing a shot in his eye. 

“Who’s scum now?” she muttered. 

Poe watched from the cockpit as one- two- three- attackers from the outpost were downed by perfectly aimed blaster shots. Poe slammed a series of buttons, but the damn engines wouldn’t stay started. 

“Those speeders are getting closer!” Anya warned, retreating back into the ship. 

“They can’t catch us in the air,” Poe said confidently. 

“We’re not flying yet, Rebel.” 

Poe must have hit the right combination of switches just then, because the next thing he knew the engines were powered up and the freighter started to hover. 

Its landing gear packed in, and it took everything in Poe not to jump for joy. 

“Alright, BB-8, I’m coming for you!” 

The speeders were within range in no time, and appeared a lot more heavily armed than they had any right to be. The precariously suspended freighter started to take heavy fire. Anya entered the cockpit then, and right when Poe went to punch it, the engine started to fail again. The ship spun out a little in the direction of the settlement, sinking a few feet. Poe tried to pull up but the back end nearly scraped the structures of Blowback Town. 

“Okay, change of plan,” Poe said. 

Anya swore and tried not to lose her balance in the co-pilot’s seat. 

“Hang on.”

“You have to get away from town, people will get hurt.” Anya’s heart was pounding in her chest. She didn’t want this place to go up in flames like the Niima outpost. 

Poe swung the lagging freighter in a wide turn towards the dunes, and the speeders below zig-zagged to change direction. The freighter wasn’t slow but it wasn’t fast either. They weren’t high enough to get away from the speeders, and whenever Poe pulled up to aim for the atmosphere, the hunk of junk started to sink. 

“When you said you rewired power to the essentials, did that include the engine?” Poe’s face rumpled in frustration. 

“Don’t get smart with me, flyboy. I fixed it,” Anya snapped. 

Poe heard her say those same words to Takka the day they met. How ironic. 

“Does that sound fixed?” He asked. The ship was moaning and groaning in protest in time with the attempted acceleration. The clan members were shooting at their backs now, and the freighter glided close enough to the ground to kick up sand without flying high enough to actually be out of the speeders’ reach. 

Anya tried not to panic. She hadn’t flown since she was a child, and the sensation of being thrust through air and space made her stomach turn. Poe dodged canon fire in a sharp bank, and Anya screwed her eyes shut. 

Time seemed to slow, and she breathed in and out. Once. Twice. Come on, Stargazer. Time to come home. 

When she opened her eyes they landed directly on a blue switch. Poe was looking at it too. 

“Blue,” they said in unison. 

“I know you hate when pilots do something crazy, but I’m about to do something crazy,” Poe said. “We’re gonna get some answers about Ohn’s custom adjustment.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling--”

Before she could finish her sentence, Poe pulled up, and like an exhale, the freighter sunk backwards and the engine lulled. Poe dove forward and slammed the blue switch, and like a shooting star, the freighter plowed forward with enough force to split moons. 

Poe was hollering victoriously as they exited the atmosphere of Jakku. Anya didn’t realize it but she was yelling too. 

Her breath caught in her throat as Poe slowed the freighter down to get one last look at the desert planet. She’d lived there since she was a child, but it hadn’t been home. Now, she was saying goodbye, and it felt bittersweet nonetheless. Anya had never seen Jakku like this before. From up here it was almost beautiful. 

While she took in the strange sight of the system they’d just left, Poe studied her face. Light shined through the transparisteel, and the little thin-as-thread scars on her tan forehead and chin turned luminous. She still had oil smudged on her face, and her hair was a mess, hood disregarded. Her cheeks were flushed from adrenaline, and Poe had the sudden epiphany that she was beautiful like this. 

Anya tore her eyes away and met Poe’s face. He was smiling at her, his brown eyes glittered. She smiled back. 

“Next stop… anywhere.”

Poe set a course for Yavin IV and put the ship into hyperdrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Sharpshooter

“You’re a good shot.” The words left Poe’s mouth before he could think about them. 

They’d been flying in comfortable silence for a little while now. Anya had spent the beginning of the journey watching stars and systems blur past the transperisteel windows with a dreamy look in her eyes, lips slightly parted. Now her attention was on Poe, a ghost of a smirk gracing her face. 

“Thanks,” she said slowly. “I’ve been trying to tell you I can take care of myself…” He could hear in her voice that she was definitely smirking. 

Poe risked a glance her way. She sat in the copilot’s chair, relaxed, ankles crossed in front of her. Her elbows were propped up on their respective arm rests and her hands were clasped over her ribs in a way that was close to lounging, but not quite. This was her first space flight in a long time and she was too on edge to lounge. 

He almost made eye contact with her, but her gaze flicked away to where his hands rested on the pilot’s controls before they could meet. She studied them for a moment. Poe looked natural in this position, the ship’s steering fitting comfortably in the curves of his hands. Despite having never flown this ship before, he did it skillfully and with little trouble. He could probably fly anything. 

Poe huffed out a chuckle. “Well, I hadn’t seen you with a blaster before.”

Anya shifted slightly in her seat, stretching her back. “Just because I’m from Jakku doesn’t mean I haven’t had plenty of target practice.”

“Who taught you?” He asked it casually, like it didn’t matter if she answered or not. . 

“My father.”

This time he didn’t bother being subtle as he raked his eyes over her face. He searched for any hint of deceit or joking, only to find that her eyes and expression were in sync with her serious tone of voice. Who was this woman and what had she done with the closed-off mechanic he met on Jakku? 

She stared back at him, unrelenting. She knew Poe hadn’t been expecting an honest answer, but she’d given him one anyways. Anya wasn’t sure why, but she had, and she couldn’t take it back now. 

Poe’s lips parted slightly, and his brain sent scrambled signals trying to decide what he should say next. Ask for more, or accept what was offered without digging too deep. 

Anya beat him to it. 

“He was an Imperial soldier.” 

Poe blinked at her, dumbstruck. 

“He switched sides.” 

The ship shuddered, and he tore his gaze off of Anya to put his eyes back to the windscreen. He felt warmth creep up his neck and onto his cheeks. 

“When the Empire fell, he realized he had nowhere to go,” Anya said, turning her own attention to anything but Poe. She settled for picking at her greased fingernails. “He was still too much of an Imperial for the Rebels to trust and too Rebel to serve the remaining Imperialists. Exiled by both, he took me and my sister to Jakku, where it didn’t matter.” 

Poe took his time processing the story she was telling him. 

Finally, he asked, “Is that why you called me Rebel earlier?” 

This made Anya laugh.

The sound sent a shockwave through Poe. 

“I didn’t mean to. Rebel was the nickname he called us. I guess it sort of slipped out.”

Anya looked up from her hands to see Poe’s face. His lips were turned up in a charming smile. Some of his brown curls were mussed and a couple hung in his eyes; and his attention was most certainly not on flying. Nervousness rippled through her stomach. 

The ship shuddered again. Poe gripped the steering, neck warming again. 

Anya climbed to her feet, sparing a glance at the windscreen. “I think I’m gonna go clean up. Let me know--”

“Yeah, I’ll let you know when--”

“Okay--” She scuttled out of the cockpit, and into the small common area. 

There was a little seating area, where she’d moved her box of junk before making their hasty escape. Off the commons were a couple panels that slid open to reveal a set of cots for the crew. Not far from them was the refresher. 

When she opened the door to the cramped room, she saw evidence of Poe’s attempt to fix the water circulation. She tried the sink. The water ran cold. The water heater was undoubtedly out of order, but at least the water was running clean. 

Anya splashed her face and ran her cool hands over the back of her neck where flyaway hairs stuck to her skin with sweat and dust. She peeled off the cowl and hood. She realized didn’t need it up here in space where there weren’t sand storms and sun, and then it occurred to her that she might not need it ever again, if she chose to go somewhere that wasn’t a desert climate. 

She turned her attention next to the sleeve on her arm. She found the end of the wrap, and untucked it letting the whole thing unravel neatly. The falling fabric revealed a set of dark bruises on her upper arm, running parallel to each other. Fingerprints. When Anya wrapped them this morning, she had been furious at the sight. She was still angry, angry he put his hands on her in the first place let alone mark her body, but the feeling waned when she remembered that she’d gotten her revenge. Now, she traced them gently with her fingers and wondered when they would disappear completely. 

She remembered the other day, when Poe had apologized to her, he’d held her by this arm. She had been worried then that he would grip her too hard, and she’d let slip a wince or a cringe, betraying how sore it actually was. Instead, his touch had been completely different from the one that caused the bruises-- loose, gentle. He hadn’t noticed the sleeve then. 

She flexed and stretched it, giving it a quick rub down, before preparing to wrap it again, when she heard footsteps approaching the open door to the refresher. 

“Hey I found--”

Poe had two thick blankets in his arms, his lips parted to finish his sentence, when he caught sight of the black and blue rings. 

“That slimeball fucking did this to you?” Poe asked, brows pinching. He reached forward involuntarily to brush them with his fingertips. 

Anya angled away just as the pads of his fingers touched her skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be piloting right now?” she asked incredulously. 

“It’s on autopilot,” Poe said simply. 

Anya’s eyebrows pinched in distress and confusion. 

Poe started again, “The ship’s been flying itself for the past hour.”

“But I… You…” Anya struggled to ask the right question. 

“I thought it’d make you feel better,” Poe said, as if it was obvious. 

Anya’s cheeks flushed. He’d been pretending to pilot so she’d feel safer. She should’ve known that. It was elementary. Ships with automated navigation and a working hyperdrive didn’t need a pilot while in hyperspace. Laser brain, she berated herself. 

Then she realized Poe was talking again and she hadn’t heard a word he said. 

“--blankets. It gets kind of cold in space.” He paused and then offered his arms to emphasize that she take one. 

“Thanks,” she said awkwardly. 

The fabric was heavy and woolen, but felt stale from years in storage. 

Poe stepped back out of her way so she could exit the refresher. He leaned against the door way and watched her go as she unfolded the blanket and draped it over her own shoulders. 

Just before she disappeared into the commons, he said, “‘Night, sharpshooter.”

She stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Night, Rebel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely forgot about sonic showers and the lack of actual plumbing, but I didn't feel like editing that bit out, so I guess I'm just gonna own the inaccuracy and move on. Thank you for reading; please comment.


	6. Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mention of torture.

He was sweating. The sensations of his body wavered between scorching hot and slick cold. Knots roiled in his stomach, and he remembered getting sick as a kid. The feverish chill he felt before the heaving came. But Poe wasn’t a child, and he wasn’t sick. He was a man, and he was being tortured. 

They’d beaten him. His hair clung to his temple where the blood had clotted. Poe tasted the blood in his mouth too. The hair and sweat and blood caked to his skin made it itch. But he couldn’t scratch it. He couldn’t move his hands. He was strapped down. 

Then he felt it. The strain. The ache. The pain. The pressure. It was in his head, behind his eyes. It was in his chest, squeezing his heart a little harder with each thundering beat. Time seemed to slow around him. He felt like he was miles underwater. 

His thoughts, his memories flashed before him, summoned by someone else. Someone searching. He saw his X-Wing. He saw BB-8. He saw Leia. He saw BB-8 again. 

Closer. 

That one. 

There. 

His mouth was open, roaring, but he couldn’t hear the sound of his own voice. Only the shuddering of an earthquake, the rumble of thunder, waves beating against rocks. 

A black hand reaching out. 

Poe fought hard. He was pushing back, shoving, clawing, but it wasn’t enough. 

The throbbing noise intensified, and a strangled scream left Poe’s throat. He heard it this time, only the voice was not his own. 

Poe gasped as he sat up. His shirt clung to the cold sweat on his body. The blanket he’d wrapped himself in pooled around his waist and tangled with his legs. The lights on the dashboard of the ship blinked at him patiently. The ethereal blue marble of hyperspace danced across his shuddering form. Aside from his heavy breathing, the space was otherwise quiet. The man rubbed a weary hand over his face. 

It wasn’t real, he thought. Just a dream. 

He leaned back in the pilot’s chair he’d fallen asleep in and tried to calm his frantic breath. 

He needed to get back to Leia. He needed to tell her…

A murmur caught his ear. The sound was so soft, he almost missed it. A muffled voice in the other room. 

“Stargazer to Echo checking in…. It’s cold out here in space tonight,” Anya said softly. 

Poe held his breath to listen. 

Buzzing static. Like a comm. 

“I’m finally chasing those stars, like you told me to. But I wish you were here.”

Static.

“I don’t really know what to do now that we made it.”

Static. 

“Poe… he’s just like you- and dad- it… scares me.” Anya sniffled wetly. 

Static.

“Echo, it’s time to come home. Come home to me.”

Poe listened for the comm to switch off but it never did. The gentle hum stretched on until he almost didn’t notice it. Eventually, he stood and walked silently into the commons. Anya was laying on her side, the blankets piled on top of her. Her hand was curled around the ancient comm, still live, but she was fast asleep. Carefully, he took the device from her hands and switched it off. He set it to the side, and tucked the blanket back over Anya’s arm. She sighed in her sleep, and for a moment, Poe was afraid she would wake up and catch him looking at her so softly. 

He froze, breathing, waiting. He forgot about the mysterious comm. He forgot about his nightmare and that awful scream. He forgot about the guilt he would feel later for eavesdropping. He studied the curves of her face and the waves in her hair which fell like a halo around her head. Poe felt kind of lost. 

Sometimes the universe felt so big, and there were so many people in it. Oftentimes the reminder wasn’t a bad thing. It taught him that there were a lot of people out there he needed to protect, a lot of people he needed to take risks for. But now, the size almost felt like a threat. Poe would have to drop Anya on Yavin IV, and he’d go back to the Resistance, and they’d likely never see each other again. They would each get swallowed up in all this space, and disappear into the masses. In a galaxy this big, a couple of people were like two moons, eclipsing for a second, before drifting off in their own orbital patterns for the next hundred years. 

Poe ached. That’s not what he wanted, not with Anya. He couldn’t just let her drift away from him after meeting for a moment, could he? 

He felt untethered. 

The pilot couldn’t sleep after that. Eventually, he went back to the cockpit and tucked himself back under his blanket, but his mind wouldn’t rest. The one time he managed to doze off, he thought of the black hand and was jerked awake immediately. If he wasn’t imagining Kylo Ren, he was thinking of Anya. 

A night cycle never felt so long.


	7. Chapter 7

When Anya woke, the comm wasn’t in her hand. It was on the table next to the bench seat she’d fallen asleep on. Strange. She didn’t remember setting it there. 

She sat up, and stretched her back. The lights in the commons area were brightened to indicate daytime in the cycle, but she didn’t know what time exactly. She stood up and adjusted her rumpled clothes, then picked up the comm link and nestled it into her now smoothed out pockets. 

The blanket was the first thing she noticed. It was strewn on the floor between the pilot’s chair and the door. 

The second thing she noticed was Poe. His chin was in his hand, elbow propped on the left armrest of his chair. His hair was disheveled and his eyes, half closed, focused on something distant only he could see. If Anya didn’t know any better, she would think he was asleep with his eyes open. 

“Poe?” she asked. 

She sat down in the copilot’s chair. Poe didn’t respond. The white-blue streaks of hyperspace still sped outside the window. 

“Poe.” 

He didn’t answer. 

She reached out for his other arm. Her fingertips barely brushed his bicep, when he jerked in his seat. She flinched away from him. 

For a moment their voices stammered over each other, Poe apologizing for scaring her, and Anya apologizing for scaring him. Finally, Poe took a deep breath and rubbed his hands over his face. 

Anya noticed there was a light shadow of stubble on his chin. 

She cleared her throat. “You look like shit, Dameron.”

Poe chuckled behind his hand and shook his head. 

“Couldn’t sleep, I guess.”

The third thing she noticed was a red blinking light on the dashboard. 

“What’s that?” she asked. 

Poe considered the light absently before he answered. “I sent a small report to my people with the Resistance last night. They responded but I haven’t listened to it yet.”

Anya let out an understanding “ah” before settling comfortably into her chair. 

“How long before we’re planetside?”

“We’ll drop out of hyperspace probably by the end of the day,” Poe said. 

Anya nodded. 

“I’ll give you a countdown,” he said, mustering a cheeky smile her way. 

She rolled her eyes, the corner of her lips turned up in a secret smirk. 

Poe turned back to the controls and let the smile fall.

He didn’t feel right after the nightmare. He felt watched, followed, like there was breath creeping down his neck. Poe wasn’t a stranger to the paranoia; the First Order tended to have that effect on the people who fought against them. It was a side effect of fighting in a mostly-secret Resistance, granted Poe didn’t keep all of his mission details a secret. He told Anya his mission, but he trusted her. No, this on-edge feeling wasn’t Anya’s fault at all. This was residue from the torture, from the nightmares. Kylo Ren had been inside his head, and now Poe didn’t feel alone. 

Anya leaned over the arm of her copilot’s seat. Poe watched in the corner of his eye as she strained for the discarded blanket on the floor. She sat up in the seat, and pulled it over her shoulders. The girl caught him looking and shrugged. 

“If you won’t use it, I will.”

For a moment, Poe’s smile felt genuine. He was getting used to the argumentative tone she never seemed to lose, and it was starting to amuse him more than it annoyed him. 

The realization gave him temporary relief, before his countenance grew dark again. He needed to ask her something, but he was scared of the answer. 

“What are you going to do once we land?” he said. 

Anya thought for a long while. She knew he would ask eventually, and she knew she would have to make a decision. But the answer was that Anya didn’t know. She’d been so focused on getting off Jakku, she hadn’t really thought about what came next. Sure, she wanted to go everywhere- anywhere- but that was a lot of places. She didn’t know where to start, and she didn’t want to pilot herself. Correction: She didn’t trust herself to pilot. Odds were that she would have to keep working as a mechanic, and commission one. 

If only she could stick with Poe. 

The sentence was brief, a nanosecond of a thought, coursing through her mind. It was a zap of electricity jumping between nerve endings in her brain that yielded the words, before they dissipated as fast as the chemistry that had caused them. Involuntary. 

No. She didn’t want to entertain that possibility. The scenario where she ran off with a fucking pilot and joined a Rebellion and stayed behind while he ran off to blow something up only to crash and burn and never see her again. Her spiraling thoughts sounded bitter even for her. Poe was nice, but Poe was a pilot, and that’s what pilots do. 

Echo didn’t mean to leave, a whisper told her. It was an accident. 

Two junky pods racing on the dunes, side by side. 

A crackly voice in the comm link. 

‘Echo to Stargazer, how are we looking?’

‘Stargazer to Echo, that final TIE on our six almost had us, but I think we finally lost him.’

‘What do you say we give the gorge one more run before dinner.’

It wasn’t real, but Anya felt it. The sand and wind burning her face, the loud churning of engines thrumming in her ears. 

‘I can make it.’

‘Echo, stop. Slow down.’

‘I can make it.’

The heat from the fire seared the hair off her arms. 

Static crackling on the comm in her hands. 

A second explosion. 

Poe waited patiently for her answer, but he was already so distracted by fatigue he had no idea how much time had passed before she finally spoke again. 

“I’ll probably set myself up in a workshop, until I make enough money to book passage somewhere else.”

He paused. That was it, huh? This was their eclipse, he thought. After that they were drifting. 

“You could always come with me?” he said tentatively. 

“What?” Anya asked, fear in her eyes. 

“I mean, you can shoot. You’re good with machines,” he mumbled, “sort of.”

Anya opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. 

“I’m just saying, the Resistance could use someone with those skills." He sounded a little more energetic as he added, "We need all the help we can get.”

Before Poe could ask her again, she was out the door to the cockpit, her voice echoing against the walls. 

“Don’t forget to countdown.”


End file.
